The Arévalo train attack was a guerrilla operation led by Pablo that destroyed a train and engaged its troops in a prolonged firefight. Recounted afterward by participants, it joins military action to its human aftermath: the escape of María, a prisoner being transported south, and her difficult first days with the fighters. The account also establishes Pablo’s role in the operation and identifies Kashkin as the foreign volunteer who made the explosion.

Background and Participants

Pablo’s responsibility for the train’s destruction emerges in conversation after the operation. Anselmo names him as the person who blew up the train at Arévalo; Pablo qualifies the account by explaining that a foreigner with the band carried out the explosion. When Robert Jordan hears the description of that man—a fair-haired volunteer with large hands and a broken nose—he recognizes him as Kashkin. Pablo recalls the unusual name but does not know what became of him; Robert Jordan tells him that Kashkin has been dead since April.

The attack involved more than Pablo’s own band. Rafael recalls that fighters from Pablo’s band, El Sordo’s band, and two other mountain bands took part, along with two men sent by the army with a machine gun. Those men could not get the gun away and lost it. Anselmo was not present: he had gone to the other side of the lines. The recollection therefore preserves an operation assembled from several groups, while also revealing the limits of what each participant witnessed directly.

The Explosion and the Fighting

Rafael’s recollection follows the train as it approached and the explosion that lifted the engine and threw up a cloud of earth and wooden ties. The engine fell onto its side; troops ran from the train as the fighters’ machine gun opened fire. The scene remains vivid in the telling not because the operation is presented as effortless, but because the blast briefly overwhelms the fighters who have set it in motion: Rafael says his excitement was so great that he put a hand on the machine gun before realizing its barrel was hot. The old woman’s rebuke brought him back to the immediate task of firing.

The attack did not end with the initial blast. After the fighters went down to the train to see what could be taken, an officer used his pistol to force soldiers back toward them. The fighters fired at him without hitting him; unable to bring the machine gun to bear because of the train’s position, they watched as the officer shot two soldiers who would not rise. Others eventually advanced toward the train, then lay down and fired. The fighters withdrew while the machine gun continued firing over them, and the troops pursued them into the night. The recollection makes the operation’s cost and uncertainty part of its account: the explosion disrupted the train, but it did not end resistance or secure an untroubled retreat.

María’s Rescue and Recovery

The operation’s aftermath is also carried by María’s account and the fighters’ recollections of finding her. She had been imprisoned in Valladolid, where her hair was regularly shaved, and was being transported south by train when the attack took place. She escaped capture in the aftermath and joined the mountain fighters. Rafael remembers that at first she would not speak, cried continually, and shivered if anyone touched her; only gradually did she begin to improve. The change is measured in the account by small signs of trust and ease: lately she had been much better, and on the day of the conversation she was able to speak well with Robert Jordan.

Her escape did not make the journey to safety simple. Rafael recalls that the group might have left her behind because she seemed too distressed and the fighters were being delayed, but the old woman insisted on bringing her. When María could no longer continue, the old woman carried her, then Rafael, then Pablo; as the party struggled uphill through gorse and heather, the old woman kept the group moving and made sure Pablo took up the burden again when he dropped her. The rescue thus appears not as a single act at the train but as a difficult collective effort, sustained by the old woman’s determination and shared among the fighters.

Recollection, Responsibility, and Meaning

The train attack is reconstructed through separated memories rather than a single comprehensive report. Pablo identifies his own part while crediting Kashkin with the explosion; Rafael supplies the extended account of the blast, the subsequent exchange of fire, and María’s escape; Anselmo explicitly notes that he was away across the lines. Robert Jordan’s later recognition of Kashkin connects this remembered operation to the wider history of the guerrillas, including the fact that Kashkin had died months before the conversation. What the fighters know is therefore uneven: the attack is a shared experience, but not every participant witnessed every part of it.

The recollection also acquires a moral weight beyond its military result. In thinking about Pilar’s capacity to tell the story of the village killings, Robert Jordan recognizes how guerrillas could leave after an operation while peasants remained to face retaliation. He reflects that they often returned to hear that people who had sheltered them had been killed, and that Pilar’s telling made the consequences of violence feel present rather than merely reported. Against that background, Rafael’s description of the train attack as the only good thing the fighters had done is not a neutral assessment of military success. The operation brought an imprisoned young woman into their care, but its remembered significance rests as well on the cost of combat, the vulnerable people caught within it, and the responsibility that continues after the fighters withdraw.